1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a printer control device, and more particularly to a printer control device which can handle a plurality of printing requests with high efficiency.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
There is available a printer system in which documents formed with a data processing unit such as a workstation or computer are received through a network, and are temporarily stored, as file data, in a disk device, and the file data thus stored is successively transferred to a data recording section in a printer so as to be printed out. The process of printing document data received through a network is referred to as "an on-line process".
A printer body, having an original document reading section, is capable of copying the original document. The process of printing the image data of an original document read with the original document reading section is referred to as "an off-line process".
In general, the on-line and off-line processes are carried out at random. Therefore, the printer performs those processes in the order that printing requests are received.
The above-described conventional printing technique suffers from the following difficulties:
As was described above, no order of priority is given to printing requests, and the printer deals with the printing requests in the order of receipt.
Accordingly, a printing request may take a long time to be processed. This delay is increased when a printing request for a long document has been received prior to the receipt of a printing request that should have priority, such as a printing request for a relatively short document. In fact, sometimes the waiting time for processing the printing request is much longer than the time it takes to print the document.
When the time for processing a printing request is much longer than the time it takes to print the document, the efficiency of the system is reduced. This problem will adversely affect a number of operators particularly in the case where a plurality of data processing units use a single printer.